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contrast with automatic rifle

Automatic rifles should not be confused with
semiautomatic rifles, as the latter fire only one shot at each pull of the trigger. An automatic rifle fires repeatedly as long as the trigger is held down, until the magazine is exhausted. That fully automatic firing is achieved by weapons such as the machine gun and submachine gun. In some models of assault rifles, fully automatic fire can be...

development

...shots per minute. Nevertheless, in order to transcend the limits imposed by manual operation, gun designers such as Mannlicher and the American Hiram Maxim came up with experimental self-loading, or semiautomatic, rifles, which used the energy generated by a fired round to load a fresh round into the chamber. However, only a handful of these weapons were adopted in very small numbers by the...

rifles

...that type have box magazines to hold cartridges for quick reloading after each shot. Lever-action and slide- or pump-action rifles are less commonly used in the 21st century, but after World War II
semiautomatic rifles became popular for hunting in the United States. It is illegal in some countries to hunt with a
semiautomatic rifle.